


somebody said you disappeared in a crowd

by viscrael



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: (ish?), Canon Compliant, Dreams, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Robot Cuddling, i wrote this when genjis blackwatch skin was first released, theyre domestic and Good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-04 00:06:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10978209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscrael/pseuds/viscrael
Summary: “You may say what you want about free will,” Genji says, “but I would like to think we would have always met, regardless of the circumstances. That we were meant to end up this way."





	somebody said you disappeared in a crowd

**Author's Note:**

> i started like right after uprising started and just now finished it lm a o im suffering
> 
> anyway genyatta is my favorite ow pair by fair in case u guys were wondering...im lov them. also. i just.............liked the idea of zenyatta somehow coming across genji prior to genji bein his student. idk. theres nothing in canon that says this DIDNT happen so . therefore i wrote it.
> 
> first time writing these two b0is so feedback is loved and appreciated! its also midnight and this is UNEdited af so. i apologize for typos ahhh
> 
> title from pink rabbits by the national

The first time they meet, Genji is a different person. He is something incomplete and _angry_ —the kind of anger that can only come from that incompleteness. He carries himself as if he has something to prove, to others and himself; something to earn. The way he walks, however, is stilted, choppy, uncomfortable. The fluidity that eventually becomes his trademark will not show up until after he has learned how to control this amalgam of a body, this conglomeration of vessels and veins, wires and metal, blood and tissue and machinery. It will not be until he is at peace with himself that he learns to move with conviction, to place one foot in front of the other with such confidence that everyone knows: this is his body, his alone, and his to carry.

But for now, he is a mess.

Zenyatta is—still with the Shambali. Still working with his brothers and sisters in Nepal to achieve peace and enlightenment within the Iris. And he will be there, working with them, a few more years before he finds it in himself to leave his home. It will be a few more years of suffering through tense conversations when there should only be amity, of disagreements over large ideologies that bleed into small, of Zenyatta’s gut telling him that something here isn’t quite _working_ —a few more years of this on repeat before he is finally inclined to listen to that feeling and forge his own path. Mondatta will watch him leave with loss weighing down on him, but he assures Zenyatta that he agrees he has his own destiny to fulfill, one that the Shambali cannot provide for him. His time there has run out. _You are needed elsewhere_.

But for now, he is there.

And they meet—in the loosest of terms. Zenyatta accompanies Mondatta during some of his speeches, and it is then, in London, that Zenyatta sees him. He is out of place and obviously in pain—not physically, but Zenyatta can see it in his expression, even hidden half behind a mask. It’s written in the lines of his eyebrows, the hunch of his shoulders, the fists at his side. Genji is hurting. Genji is hurting something painful.

It would not be a strange encounter, really—they don’t interact, and in fact Zenyatta thinks looking back on it, it might have been a one-sided meeting—if not for the peculiarity of Genji, clearly machinery and bone laced together and clearly suffering because of it. As he watches this stranger from afar, Zenyatta wonders what could have made it so. What could have required someone to live the way that Genji—this stranger, this chance encounter—visibly does not want to be living.

 

\--

 

“What do you dream about?”

Genji asks it as they’re lying on Zenyatta’s cot, mechanical limbs sprawled out and entangled. They are a mess of cables and legs right now, twisted in the best possible way. Genji lays with his chest to Zenyatta’s, his chin propped up on Zenyatta’s collarbone as they lounge under a mountain of pillows, half of them taken from Genji’s room when he all but moved in here. When they had first started living in their dorms at Gibraltar, Genji had contained himself to his own room, but over time that had been thrown almost completely out the window. Now they spend most of what little free time they have in Zenyatta’s dorm, idly passing the hours by meditating or sleeping or—like now—cuddling.

“Anything, I suppose,” Zenyatta says. “Is there something in particular you want to know about?”

“No, Master. I was only curious if you have things in specific you dream of.”

The moment Zenyatta shut the door behind him, Genji had taken off his mask and thrown it aside, leaving his scarred face open and vulnerable. He does that when it’s only the two of them, both because he says it’s more comfortable and as a small—but significant—sign that he trusts Zenyatta with everything. This way, Zenyatta can see all the expressions Genji makes in full. He can’t say he doesn’t appreciate it, especially now, as Genji’s eyes show something soft when he answers Zenyatta’s question. It feels like there is something deeper behind the topic, but Genji’s face is relaxed, open. He might be falling asleep.

“Reoccurring dreams?”

He nods.

Zenyatta thinks about it, humming quietly. A hand comes up to rest on the small of Genji’s back as he tries to remember, and Genji’s eyes fall shut slowly as if he really _will_ fall asleep. Zenyatta finally offers, “I’ve had more than one dream of drowning. Is that what you mean?”

“Why drowning?”

“I would sink,” Zenyatta says lightly. “And even if I would not, I can’t swim. I wouldn’t have had anyone to teach me, even if I were capable of floating.”

“Have you ever tried?”

“Hmm. I suppose I haven’t.”

“You may be lighter than you think,” Genji says. He’s only spitting out ideas, of course, and the relaxed smile on his lips says that to be true. He opens his eyes lazily and blinks, his expression not unlike that of a cat waking from a nap under the sun. He shifts, pulling his arm out from where it had been under Zenyatta’s side and lifting it to trace lines across Zenyatta’s artificial collarbone. The tracing is loose, fluid, but feels meaningful somehow. Zenyatta wonders if he’s writing something.

“What brought this up so suddenly?” Zenyatta asks. Genji continues tracing, but the pattern changes to something else. Zenyatta watches the movements carefully in an attempt to decode it.

“I have always had reoccurring dreams,” Genji says.

“When you were a child?”

“Particularly when I was a child. As a teenager, they calmed. I did not dream…much, then. Or if I did, I do not remember them. But as a child, I had the same dreams over and over again. And after I received this new body, the dreams returned.”

He is tracing the kanji for _dream_ , Zenyatta recognizes, and then _fate_. Zenyatta had added spoken Japanese into his language software upon taking Genji as his student in hopes it would make Genji feel more comfortable, but he didn’t bother with written language as Genji never wrote anything out anyway. Since then, he has been casually teaching himself to read and write it. Of course he could download the language the way he did with spoken if he wanted to, but this way his mind is occupied. Sometimes he likes having small, informal projects to work on in his downtime.

“These dreams,” Zenyatta says, and the hand on Genji’s back moves up to settle between his shoulder blades. Genji traces the kanji over and over again idly. “May I ask what they were of?”

“Death. All of them were omens.”

“And you listened to none?”

“Why would I have? I was young and naïve and convinced I was invincible.” He chuckles quietly, the kanji switching again this time to something Zenyatta does not understand, and he studies the way Genji’s eyes crinkle at the corners and his scarred flesh moves with every smile it is tugged into.

Zenyatta hums again in agreement. While serious, the conversation has a light tone to it, a soft one—maybe because Genji feels comfortable enough to talk about this with Zenyatta, maybe because they are able to talk about this at all. It’s a testament to Genji’s personal growth that he’s okay right now. Zenyatta has found, in his twenty years, that when you are once again whole, it becomes easier to speak about the things that made you incomplete in the first place.

“They have returned recently?” Zenyatta asks.

“Not recently. But I was thinking…”

“Hm?”

“There is this one I have been having,” Genji says. He stops writing on Zenyatta’s body and instead lays his chin back on the Omnic’s collarbone once again before continuing. “That I didn’t have as a child, or a teenager. It is new, but has not left me alone since I became your student.”

“That long?”

He nods. “It is…well, the dream is always us as we are, but I am different—I am…who I was before I met you.”

Zenyatta knows what he means when he says “who I was before”; Genji has told him what he suffered through when he was first getting used to his cyborg body, when he was still plagued by anger and betrayal and self-hatred for what he had been made. It was not a proud time in his life, Genji says, but he doesn’t resent his past self either. He says he would not be who he is now if he had not been allowed to grieve the loss of his body and betrayal of his brother.

“What happens in these new dreams?” Zenyatta asks.

“I am who I was before I met you, but you are as you are now. And…when we meet, I do not recognize you, but you know me. And…” He pauses as if to recall what happens next.

“And?”

He shakes his head. “That’s it, generally. We meet. You speak to me as if I know you, and in my dream, I am always confused and lash out.”

“The way that you did before.”

“Yes, that way.”

Genji was not the kindest when they first met. He wasn’t as bad as before he left Overwatch, he tells Zenyatta—but there was definitely growth. His anger and grief and dysphoria made him verbally lash out at whatever was nearest, including Zenyatta, some days—and other days, it made him retreat back into himself. _Yes, that way_.

“That is all,” Zenyatta says to confirm, although it doesn’t come out as a question.

“That is all,” Genji agrees.

“Hmm.” Zenyatta thinks about it. The hand on Genji’s shoulder blades rested there as they spoke, but he slowly moves it up now until he’s at the back of Genji’s neck, feeling the dip between mechanics and flesh as he mulls over the information given to him. Genji seems to suppress a shiver when Zenyatta’s hand skims over that threshold. His eyes flutter closed again and then open once more, not meeting Zenyatta’s gaze entirely—although if it is about the dreams or the touching, Zenyatta can’t tell.

“Genji,” Zenyatta says.

“Yes, Master?”

“Am I causing you discomfort?”

Genji blinks as if confused. “In the dream?”

Zenyatta can’t smile, but if he could his lips would upturn in a small grin now. And because Genji knows him so well, he seems to understand the sentiment Zenyatta is quietly expressing, if the way that he looks to the left of Zenyatta in embarrassment is any indication.

“No, right now,” Zenyatta says, not yet moving his hand from the threshold. “All of the sudden you just seemed…agitated, perhaps. Is the touching too much?”

“Of course not!”

The immediacy of the answer catches Zenyatta off guard—and Genji too by the looks of it. He shrinks back slightly, shaking his head once. “You don’t cause me discomfort, master. Don’t worry about it. Nothing you could do could make me uncomfortable.”

“I doubt that.”

“There is _no_ _way_ you could touch me that would make me uncomfortable,” Genji clarifies, and although he seems only to be rebutting Zenyatta’s comment, the sincerity with which he says it makes Zenyatta’s chest light.

“I am glad to hear you say that,” Zenyatta admits.

It feels like there is something else to be said, here, right at this moment in between the look that passes between them, Zenyatta’s hand still on Genji’s neck, Genji still with his chin propped up on Zenyatta’s collarbone. But nothing is said. And they only sit like that, content but embarrassed, and Zenyatta lets the quiet persist. The hand slides around to cup Genji’s cheek instead, feeling the rough flesh that contrasts so greatly with the smooth chrome of the rest of his body. Genji tilts his face into Zenyatta’s hand softly, and there is that lightness again, the issue of dreams and encounters forgotten.

 

\--

 

When the rest of Overwatch is asleep—or at least in their rooms pretending to be—Zenyatta is in his own dorm, meditating. It’s then that Genji comes to see him.

“I’m sorry for disturbing you, Master.” He closes the door silently behind him and stands as if waiting for Zenyatta to give him permission. Zenyatta, pulled from his meditation, waves Genji forward.

“You have no need to apologize,” he says. “It’s always good to see you. You are not disturbing me.”

Genji nods and, seeing Zenyatta gesturing, moves to sit down on the ground in front of him, crossing his legs as if he is going to follow Zenyatta’s idea of meditating. There is a futon in the dorm that they could be using to sit on, but Zenyatta prefers not to use it when mediating, and tonight—like most nights—he had spent the past few hours doing just that. Omnics sleep and experience dreams the same way that humans do; they just don’t need as _much_ sleep, and the process by which they fall unconscious is, of course, a little different than humans’.

Joining Overwatch marked the beginning of Zenyatta actually living with humans. Before moving into the base, the only human that he had ever lived under the same roof with was Genji, and even Genji’s sleeping patterns were a little different than what Zenyatta has found others’ to be. At this point, he has gotten used to being the only one awake at odd hours of the night. He was not expecting Genji to join him.

“Is something bothering you?” he asks, folding his hands back in his lap. Genji pauses to take his mask off, and Zenyatta waits patiently for him to get himself in order, setting his faceplate gently next to him and folding his own hands to mirror Zenyatta. There are bags under his eyes, more noticeable than usual, his skin almost translucent with how pale he is.

“Actually…” Genji starts, then stops. He unfolds then refolds his hands. “I could not sleep. May I meditate with you until I’m able to rest?”

“Of course.”

Genji smiles, then bows his head and closes his eyes. Zenyatta watches him for a moment before falling into his familiar routine—the emptiness and the detox of his mind, the shutting down of his servers and senses until he’s able to focus. They sit there together for what might be hours, might be minutes, neither speaking, comfortable and content and clear.

Then Zenyatta feels a change in Genji, in his demeanor. He’s lost focus, and so lost track of his breathing and their meditation. A few minutes after he makes this observation, Genji shifts in front of Zenyatta, giving up his attempts to continue.

Sensing Genji’s hesitance, Zenyatta prompts, “Is there something wrong?”

“No,” Genji answers immediately, but he stops. He seems to actually think about the question. He opens his mouth—then closes it again, his shoulders dropping.

“You do not have to tell me if you’d prefer not to,” Zenyatta assures.

“No,” he says again. “No, it is…not like that. I’m…only trying to figure out how to say what I’m thinking. Give me a moment?”

“Of course. All the time you need.”

Like he promised he would, Zenyatta doesn’t push him to say anything for the next few minutes, wherein they only continue to sit across from each other. Unable to go back to his previous task with Genji preparing to speak with him, Zenyatta doesn’t do anything but sit there, his hands still folded, only watching Genji as he gets his thoughts in order. Zenyatta can almost see the gears turning in Genji’s head, can see the frantic way he is scavenging for the words he wants to say.

Genji does that sometimes, Zenyatta has noticed—struggle to find what he wants to say. He says that he didn’t always used to be like that, that it was only recently that he’s struggled so much, but when Zenyatta asked if it was related to his new body, Genji shook his head. _Angela…believes it is more psychological than physical_ , he explained.

Zenyatta remembers this now as he waits.

Finally, Genji sighs deeply but sits up straighter. “The other day,” he starts, “when I asked you about dreams…”

“Yes?”

“I cannot stop having that one—about us.”

“About us meeting,” Zenyatta says to confirm. Genji nods, looking down to look at Zenyatta’s hands, and Zenyatta continues, “Is that an issue?”

“No—“ He stops. “Except…yes. I cannot figure out why I keep having that dream. And I don’t—I do not understand why it feels so…” He pauses again, longer this time, his eyebrows furrowed. “Master.”

Zenyatta unfolds his hands and lays them by his side. “Yes?”

“Have we…I mean—did we meet? Prior to our first _real_ meeting?”

For a moment, Zenyatta isn’t quite sure how to respond. He isn’t sure what Genji wants the answer to be, or if he is truly only looking for the truth. He settles on, “I believe we may have run into one another at one point before our first meeting, if you could consider my seeing you from across a crowd in London a ‘meeting’.”

Genji is quiet for a moment. Then: “Oh.”

“Oh?”

“Oh,” he repeats, and he blinks twice as if just registering the words. “I just…don’t remember that. I don’t think I saw you—or if I did, that I remembered you enough to put it together…But that would explain the dreams.”

“Perhaps it was your subconscious’s way of informing you that you missed something,” Zenyatta says lightly. At that Genji’s lip twitches up into a smile.

“Perhaps,” he agrees. “I am sorry for worrying you over something so…small, then. You are aware reoccurring dreams have never been a good omen for me.”

Zenyatta nods. “Of course. I can imagine why that freaked you out, yes.”

“If I may…” Genji says, shifting. “What was your first impression of me? If you really did see me then?”

There is the image then, one that Zenyatta has not thought about for quite some time now, of Genji—freshly hurting. In his mind he compares the Genji that he saw that day in London to the Genji that wandered into his life. One, even from so far away, was bleeding out on the pavement, dripping more and more with every movement, every foot he placed awkwardly in front of the other leaving a trail of hurting behind him that anyone could feel, could see. He may have been living then, but he was not yet _really_ _living_. And there was the other, stumbling upon Zenyatta but then insisting, begging even, for guidance and understanding and knowledge and _healing_. This Genji—the second Genji he met—wanted to live, wanted to live truly, fully, wanted to live _well_.

And he thinks about these Genjis, and compares both to the one in front of him, waiting quietly, patiently for his answer, his face so open and vulnerable, his skin so pale and the bags under his eyes so dark and the scars on his body so prominent. And even through all of that, there is nothing Zenyatta can find in Genji’s eyes even now that does not make him want only to love him more, and Zenyatta’s chest fills suddenly and unexpectedly warm with just how proud of Genji he is, of just how much he loves this man.

“I noticed you were in pain,” is what Zenyatta ends up telling him, although he is not quite thinking about that version of Genji. He is thinking about how many different versions there are, how many different lives he’s lived, how fate somehow still allowed them to end up here, in this moment, alone in the quiet of Zenyatta’s dorm, talking of dreams and first meetings.

“I see,” Genji says. “A part of me is glad that you did not get to know me then.”

Zenyatta pauses in his musings of fate. He tilts his head slightly in questioning. “Why is that?”

“You already know that I was not...the best then. As you noticed, I was in pain. I am not proud of that version of me. I am glad…I am glad you were able to help me grow into who I am now. But I do not know if that version of me would have allowed it.” As he spoke, his fingers had been pressed into the wooden floor and seemed to reach for his mask as if to hide himself, but now, he changes direction and instead finds Zenyatta’s own mechanical ones. “It is lucky that we knew each other when we did.”

“Luck,” Zenyatta echoes in a thoughtful hum.

“Do you not agree, Master?”

Zenyatta moves his hand in Genji’s, entwining their fingers. Omnics’ hands are not usually intended for holding, but they make it work. He explains, “I consider it more along the lines of fate. I’ve found that luck rarely has anything to do with it. Fate and your own free will—those are to thank here. And your free will in this case, your determination to get better—I believe you should give yourself more credit for that. Genji.”

“Yes, Master?”

“There are no words to express how proud I am of your growth.”

Genji blinks, like that had been the last thing he’d expected out of his teacher’s mouth, but he gets over the shock soon. His expression is replaced instead with a wide, pink-cheeked smile, and he squeezes Zenyatta’s hand back.

“You may say what you want about free will,” Genji says, “but I would like to think we would have always met, regardless of the circumstances. That we were meant to end up this way. I would like to think that is what these dreams mean.”

“I would like to think that too,” Zenyatta agrees.

 

\--

 

Genji spends the remainder of the night in Zenyatta’s dorm, and when they realize the sun is rising, he hurries to return to his own and prepare for the day. Before leaving the room, he stops, his mask still held loosely in one hand, turns to Zenyatta, and presses a soft kiss to his face plate—where his cheeks would be if he were human.

He disappears soon after with a promise of returning. Zenyatta only stays there, hovering over his futon as he thinks over how many versions of the cyborg there are, counting them in his head and, finally, allowing the uncontainable warmth in his chest to wash over him completely.

It hits him sometimes, just how strongly he loves Genji, just how incompetent words are to describe the strength of that love.


End file.
